At the Department of Defense (DoD), Raytheon, HP Enterprise Services and Lockheed Martin lead the contractor pack, according to a set of reports from IT research firm IDC that are designed to highlight fiscal year 2013 DoD IT spending and the top vendors within that market.
To understand how IT dollars are being spent within the Defense Department, IDC Government Insights reviewed the contracts that have been awarded for IT hardware, software and services. While there are many high-profile IT contracts that receive a lot of attention, such as the multibillion-dollar Army Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – 2 Services (ITES-2S) contract, the report noted there are also many small contracts that have an aggregate impact on DoD buying patterns.
At 31 percent, the Army is expected to award the highest amount (within the DoD) of IT contracts for FY 2014, followed by the Navy (26 percent) and the Air Force (24 percent). The report also provides details on the most popular contracts used to purchase IT solutions, including a table of top contracts for a set of technology categories that include telecommunications solutions, support functions, logistics and more, further broken down by top contractors for each area and a list of the largest focus areas for the contracts.
“Overall, IT needs at the Defense Department are growing, even as budgets are shrinking. DoD is now heavily focused on moving solutions to the cloud, and funding programs that help them consolidate data centers, work towards improved interoperability, and improve cyber-security,” Shawn McCarthy, research director at IDC Government Insights, said in a statement. “Because DoD is moving to a joint operations environment for many IT solutions, the largest growth is happening in the so-called ‘other defense agencies,’ which include organizations such as the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).”
While total IT spending within the Defense Department has been trickling downwards after peaking at roughly $37.7 billion in 2010, spending is likely to rise in FY 2014, with the preliminary spending targeted at more than $34 billion. The Other IT and Telecommunications category was the most popular product or service label used by many DoD services and agencies, the report found.
“Even with the rise, we expect this to be a temporary blip, as DoD continues to reduce its presence in the Middle East and works to standardize some older systems in order to consolidate resources and close some additional data centers,” McCarthy continued. “After 2014, we expect to see DoD IT budget reductions of roughly 2 percent per year for FY 2015 and FY 2016.”